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Book Reviews

in the post-1848 "Borderlands." Regrettably, outside of the academy, the U.S.-Mexican War is not well known. After reading this book, however, its effects areshown to be very profound and provide necessary information for anyone whowants to understand the roots of the present-day "Borderlands."Iris H. W. Engstrand's considerable ability at synthesizing lots of informationshows in her essay. Richard Griswold del Castillo provides an excellent overviewof one of his areas of expertise, the legal and human rights effects of the 1848treaty. Despite some questionable descriptions of Mexicans and MexicanAmericans ("little Mexican jumping beans"; "they never get tired"; "they don'tknow what injustice means"; "little mariposztas"), and a lack of needed historicalbackground information, Elena Poniatowaska's essay pointedly and articulatelydescribes, from the heart, the human side of the problems of illegal immigrantsin the U.S. Southwest. Finally, the illustrations are well chosen and skillfully addto the points made by the authors.Angelo State University JAMES F. SIEKMEIERJuan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836-1842. By Robert Ryal Miller. (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Pp. xiii+179. Illustrations, preface, appen-dices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN o-8061-3077-6. $29.95, cloth.)For those of us who have tried to untangle the complex political and socialworld of Mexican California prior to 1848, this book is a welcome guide, wellwritten, clearly told, and full of wonderful stories that are new and interesting.Too often the Californios, the Mexican landed classes in this period, are viewedas stereotypes without much personality. Miller's book gives us a flesh-and-bonepolitical biography of one of the most important figures of this era, JuanAlvarado.Alvarado was a native-born Californian who became governor of the territoryand led his compatriots in democratic revolutions and protests against MexicoCity's high handed leaders. He championed legislative initiative, public schools,government internal improvements, and many other projects to improve theeconomy and political health of the province. He presided over the mostmomentous economic change in the history of California, the breakup of themission lands and the distribution of these lands to the native Californians, for-eigners, and Indians. The Americans inherited this land tenure situation andappropriated the land grants, which today are the basis of large industrial-sizefarms and sprawling metropolitan complexes.Alvarado grew up in northern California and was related to another powerfulCalifornia figure, Gen. Mariano Vallejo. Together they endured the Americantakeover of their country and both authored multi-volume histories that remainunpublished and untranslated in the Bancroft library. Miller has mined theAlvarado manuscripts for choice nuggets of information. In 1827, for example,the diputacion at Monterey voted to change the name of California to"Moctezuma" in honor of the Aztecs. We learn that as young men Vallejo andAlvarado secretly purchased books that were on the Catholic Church's Indexand that they were briefly threatened with excommunication. Alvarado, along